Knight Club

I was discussing art with the Beautiful Competition over a lovely dinner of Italian food, pink Champagne and lemon gelato last evening (it's a difficult life, isn't it?) and we got on the subject of film. I've been thinking a lot about The Dark Knight lately, which I've reviewed before, as a cultural touchstone or artefact: that is, something that captures a certain kind of zeitgeist. I realized that I like Dark Knight for many of the same reasons I like another artefact film: Fight Club. They're excellent films to examine side-by-side.

Fight Club came out in 1999, and managed to capture the late Clinton-era zeitgeist in a way that no other film can claim. The notion of office workers, bored by their jobs and betrayed by promises that they would be ‘rock gods or movie stars' turning to small-scale domestic terrorism to show their dissatisfaction reflected a growing ennui among the young professional class. It was a film born from economic safety, a remote threat of real terrorism (can you imagine Fight Club being released after 9/11?) and a view that the villain is not only likable, he's something to which we might aspire as he's just an aspect of us.

Other images I associate with this time are almost straight out of the film: the pictures of the impotently-smashed windows of Starbucks' and McDonalds during the so-called Battle of Seattle WTO protests. Rather than striking at the true culprits, it's as though the anarchists decided upon direct action for direct action's sake, vandalizing franchises that represented something tangentally associated with the targets of their rage. They struck against the same coffee shops where they purchased their own tall skinny soy lattes, as if what they hated the most was something inside themselves.

Then consider Dark Knight, where a much more separated hero battles a villain who is more like a force of Nature. Bruce Wayne is the military-industrial complex, a do-gooding rich person who feels that the best way to alleviate crime is not to redistribute wealth or fund educational programs, but to physically beat criminals and purchase hotels by writing personal checks. His superpowers consist of nothing more than access to the latest military weapons technology that in turn fuels his vast personal fortune when he's not using it to hit escaped mental patients.

On the other side is the Joker, a literal wildcard who makes quite clear that he wishes only to cause destruction and chaos. He has no logical plan or reasoning – he is, by his own admission, a ‘dog chasing cars, and wouldn't know what to do if [he] caught one' – acting entirely on instinct. His villainy comes not from any rhyme or reason; in fact, it's difficult to even call it evil as it doesn't appear to be motivated by a need to cause harm other than the opposite of the established order. In a way, it's a perfect and safe Western dream: good people in the military-corporate network keeping us safe from forces of darkness that cannot (or we simply refuse to take the time to) be understood.

Don't get me wrong; I loved the Dark Knight but its overtones are difficult to ignore. It's interesting to compare the two films as far as what they indicate of the national mindset, what makes a ‘hero' and what's acceptable both for heroes and villains. In fact, are the villains actually us? How much are we like them? These questions are nothing new to comics or stories, but the ways in which the answers change are very indicative of how our mindset shifts, however subtly. In this case, I think it reflects a growing cynicism, that the ennui of the late 1990s was replaced first with a renewed optimism and faith in leadership, government and military which was the squandered and eventually taken advantage of, creating a reaction possibly more cynical than the previous one.

Oddly enough, it's not the heroes in these films that are the most accurate reflections of the times but the villains themselves. Tyler Durden's rage against the corporate machine manifesting as minor acts of terrorism and simple human empowerment with material denial is a perfect model of the aimless feeling of basic dissent we exhibited at the end of the 1990s. Clinton lied, but he lied about getting blowjobs. The economy looked pretty good. We weren't involved in any foreign wars, and had the full backing of NATO and the UN in Kosovo.

The Joker is us now, rage without focus, the anti-structure. Whatever's in place is bad, because it's inherently corrupt and probably going to screw us anyway. Piles of money in shipping containers? Just stuff to be burned, because hey, the guys at the top have been bleeding it out of the good citizen of Gotham anyway. And we should probably be punished in some way because we're complacent in putting these power structures in place to begin with. The commoners are as much to blame as anyone else, and it's better just to burn it all and start again.

It's hard to imagine a Joker smashing a Starbucks', but it's also hard to imagine Tyler Durden forcing commoners and criminals to face a prisoner's dilemma. And it's hard to imagine us accepting either doing those things, exactly because it would be so out of context of the times.

Existentialism and Poetry

The older I get, the more French Existentialism makes sense. And inspires me. Take the following from Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus:

Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: 'tomorrow', 'later on', 'when you have made your way', 'you will understand when you are old enough.' Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it's a matter of dying. Yet a time comes when a man notices that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time and, by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. The revolt of the flesh is the absurd.

Emphasis mine. So I have this:

Building by Jason Mical

Stone and brick make this place
My fort.
My tree house.
This thing I cleared with a stick
and summertime persistence.

Time flows oddly here
Days in seconds
or seconds in days.
I'm eighty, wrinkled and out of breath,
I'm ten and can't sit still.

Entropy House I call it,
my carved-rock place,
where I rule as King and cannot be touched.

Speaking of entropy,
I return here more and more
The older/younger I get/feel
I don't want to waste my key after all.

A tower, a cave, an elevator to space.
A roller-coaster.
Magic it is and was, something ineffable,
Least of all by me and I'll be damned if I'm telling you.

I've never left this room,
doorless, windowless,
The way blocked by a triangle
of insecurity, fear and ennui.

Some days I am Spider-Man, climbing walls with my hands.
Some days I just am and call it good.

959-Word Movie Review: The Dark Knight

I realize I’m doing one of the single-most boring things a person can do with a personal blog: review a film. But I just got back from The Dark Knight and I wanted to share my impressions, because films often change in my mind and I want to record exactly what I’m thinking now.

I loved it. Absolutely fucking loved it. It’s been a long, long time since I sat in a movie theater and thought, yes, I’m glad I’m seeing this in a theater because I’m having a great time. And it’s been a long, long time since I walked out of a movie theater and though that was an incredible experience.

The Beautiful Competition and I were discussing the film afterwards and I said that I liked it better than Batman Begins and probably better than any superhero movie before. True (at least, as of right now, give me a while and I’ll probably get lost in the film’s flaws.) It wasn’t a perfect movie, but is there such a thing? It was a fantastic Batman movie. I had to check to see if Jeph Loeb had anything to do with it (he didn’t.) It was a great superhero movie, and it was a fantastic film.

One of the things I like to explore both as a reader and as a writer is the way moral codes and philosophies survive at extreme conditions. Oddly enough, the best to cite about this is Elie Wiesel’s Night, a book I did not particularly enjoy but the crux of which was the very absolutist view that no morality can survive in the most extreme of conditions – in that case, the Holocaust. I’ve never thought that thesis was particularly true, except perhaps on a meta level, but lives are not lived and decisions are never made on the meta level. They are individual things. And that is exactly what The Dark Knight addresses, head on.

Spoiler Alert

Heath’s Joker is probably my favorite villain in a comic book movie, because his crusade forces Batman’s hand. At first, it seems he’s playing the same game as the rest of the mobsters that Batman’s been fighting: why else would he want to work with them, to ask for their money? But it eventually becomes clear his motivation really is, well, utterly unmotivated by anything except a desire for absolute anarchy. There’s a brilliant scene where Bruce Wayne and Alfred discuss The Joker’s motivations and how to get in his head and stop him. Bruce says that it’s easy for Batman to stop the other villains because in the end, they are motivated by money and fear. Even dyed-in-the-wool psychopaths like the Scarecrow (who makes an awesome cameo, by the way) are motivated on some level by these same sorts of things. But how does Batman deal with a criminal who is only interested in causing chaos and destruction? Something that’s more of a force of nature than a motivated human being? And is it possible to deal with someone like that in a way that allows you not to compromise your moral principles?

There’s a brilliant bit of foreshadowing, where the characters discuss the Romans and their practice of handing over power to a dictator in times of crisis. In all instances but one, the dictator (eventually, the historian in me says!) resigned his position and returned power to the Senate and People. But it only took one - Caesar – to annihilate the Republic and create the Empire. Batman cannot win his battle without a compromise, and the one he decides to make is just as interesting as the other moral situations in the film. Even better is the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which is ripped straight from Game Theory (and, I should note, Matt Mason at The Pirate’s Dilemma covered quite eloquently.) As Mason notes, that scene is where The Joker slips and where The Dark Knight truly shines as an exploration of morality in extreme conditions. The outcome of the situation (I won’t spoil the particulars) actually left me quite stunned, but in a pleasant way. And it did give Batman the chance to beat The Joker, after all!

But this complexity is the greatest pleasure I can take from a film or a book. It’s simply an abstract form of what I like so much about horror movies, specifically zombie films – which are in and of themselves just the next iteration of post-apocalypse films. It is being forced to make decisions when confronted with the absurd. The day-to-day decisions aren’t so important: decisions made when faced with the most absurd and extreme of conditions – a ferry full of prisoners and a ferry full of normal people, with each holding the other detonator; a motivationless psychopath who won’t stop killing; the dead returning to life to feast on the living – these are all things that remove a person from the norm and force them to look at things in a new way. I use the word ‘absurd’ in a loaded fashion, because it’s exactly how Neitzsche, Heidegger and specifically Camus refer to what life and meaning are in the first place: ways to deal with these extreme conditions that, in the end, are something we must make and be responsible for on our own.

[Note: I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that Harvey Dent / Two-Face actually progresses from being responsible for his decisions to his infamous coin-flipping, leaving choice and more importantly responsibility up to fate as the movie progresses. Which is really an entirely different essay, but adds a good deal of flavor and another layer of depth to the film.]

So there I am: The Dark Knight impressions. Holy freaking crap it was a good movie.

Blog New World

If I had to choose one fiction book to preserve in case of a nuclear war, it would probably be Brave New World. It was the subject of my final research paper in college, and I can say with a high degree of certainly that it is the single most influential book I’ve read. The thesis of my research paper was that as society – specifically American society, but the increasingly global society as well – comes closer to resembling that of Brave New World the people in it must decide how to deal with the knowledge of its inner workings. Do we, as John Savage did, take the final exit and commit suicide with the knowledge that we will be powerless to change the overall society as individuals? Or make a different existential choice?

Re-reading my paper I stand by my thesis that suicide is existentially irresponsible, and what I’m interested in at the moment is the way in which society is looking increasingly like that in Brave New World (for the sake of brevity and clarify, I’ll refer to that society as BNW as opposed to the full title of the book.)

Brave New World often plays second fiddle to its cousin, Orwell’s 1984. Both are dystopian novels, but postulate two very different futures. Byfar the best summary of the differences is this excerpt from Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

I emphasized what I consider the most relevant part of Postman’s summary of the two novels. In BNW people are conditioned from birth to have desires and wants, to have a driving need to consume but no capacity for reasoning why and when they ask why they are socially outcast and given drugs. Contrast this with 1984 and its poor, oppressive, tyrannical society. In short, BNW is a capitalist dystopia while 1984 is a communist dystopia.

Political and economic theories aside, what interests me as a digital strategist is the BNW take on information, specifically the flood of information that would ‘reduce us to passivity and egoism’ and ‘the truth [being] drowned in a sea of irrelevance.’ At the time Postman wrote that book, the Internet was in the hands of the government, the World Wide Web still a twinkle in the eye of some college hackers, and things like blogs, Twitter, RSS, social media and even forums completely alien. There was Usenet seven years before the Endless September, but was hardly a common media type.

In other words, with the explosion of the Internet, the Web, push-button publishing and what has become collectively known as Citizen-Generated Media (blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts, and so forth) the sheer amount of information to which we have access has increased. I’m not sure by what factor, but I’m willing to guess it’s in thousands if not the millions. In other words, that sea of irrelevance just got far bigger than the few hundred magazines, few dozen TV channels and local newspapers of Postman’s time.

We were already teetering on the brink of inanity before; how do we keep from completely drowning in it? What makes information accountable in digital media? Or have we already sunk so low into the ocean that we’ve simply been reduced to passive observers, willing to blog about something but little else?

There seem to be arguments for several sides and positions within this discussion. I’m reminded that while war and genocide raged in Darfur the citizens of Digg were more concerned with the suppression of the code that would have allowed them to steal HD DVDs. Two of the most widely-read blogs online are about celebrity gossip and captioning pictures of cats with grammatically incorrect jokes. This certainly seems to support the white noise and irrelevance argument.

Take Wikipedia, which despite having ranked higher than forums, blogs, social networks and other online sources of information in Edelman’s own Trust Barometer still has a (somewhat deserved) reputation as a source of credible information as long as you’re looking for references in DragonballZ, Pokemon, or Buffy. This xkcd cartoon from the other day illustrates the point in a humorous manner, and it sparked a conversation with Seth shortly after I read it and shared it. Seth turned me on to Wikipedia which, despite its flaws, is an amazing source of information. Sure, there is some inanity on it, but part of the Wikipedia user experience is to flag it or improve it for other readers (and myself). This is the important piece that makes Wikipedia work: it’s self-correcting and the vast amount of information therein can be filtered and adjusted as necessary.

Another example of the contrary argument is how quickly the online community picked up on Iran doctoring the press images of its recent missile launch. Less than 24 hours after Iran released the images to the international press, the online community noticed they Photoshopped it (poorly) to make their missile launch look more successful than it actually was.

It remains to be seen of course whether unmasking Iran’s Photoshop shenanigans will spark and real debate that might lead to actual change in the policies that have created that state, from internal and external influences. So it’s arguable whether there is any real ‘value’ in the online community responding so quickly and accurately as far as long-term debate and dialogue go. But it certainly appears that despite the vast sea of information out there, the truth is not drowning in the irrelevant white noise yet.

Or is it? As I have been composing this post, a fascinating post went up on the IdeaLab about Polymeme and diversifying what it calls the echo chamber. I particularly like the opening bit:

The iPhone is released. The world stops.

While surfing around on the Internet today, you would be entirely forgiven for assuming that the only news worth talking about is the release of Apple's 3G iPhone. Of course, there are plenty of other notable and interesting conversations taking place online (among them: the ethics of for-profit fundraisers, a Danish island's march toward energy independence, and how English is "evolving into a language we may not even understand") but most of us don't know how to find those conversations as we navigate through our personal echo chamber of bookmarked websites, subscribed RSS feeds, and the web pages they link to.

The post goes on to describe the Polymeme tool, a service that scours RSS feeds for related content to introduce users to new stories.

The idea that this moves beyond the echo chamber is what roused my interest. Digital Media’s greatest strength, and that which allows it to avoid becoming a sea of complete irrelevance, is also its greatest weakness in that the most relevant can easily be lost: it is an echo chamber for most. Even so-called news aggregators like Digg are fuelled by their userbase and what that userbase feels is important, which leads to situations like the HD DVD crack being the news of the day over Darfur genocide.

The takeaway here isn’t that it is still unclear whether the digital space will liberate us from our own BNW, or be the thing that finally encapsulates us in it. The popularity of the echo chamber versus discovery tools like Polymeme is disconcerting to say the least, but even my own Twitter group leads to me discover things I never would have before. At the very least we can stave off our willing slavery for a little while longer.

Image "Savages Row" from Ruddington Photos Flickr stream.

Blast From the Past

Well here's a surprise: googling for pictures of Nietzsche, I come across my old Philosofighter mock-game. The email still links to my old email address and the link goes to my (now-defunct) old website. Kept alive (without credit, but I don't really care) by this chap. Crazyness!

Update: even stranger, the picture appears on this Arabic-language forum, and the text below translates to, according to Google reader:

Wisdom of the world:

Not standing on the ground and Teh
Not climb very high!
The world is Sightliest
Go to the mid-high

Quote says

Strict and inflexible, and the harsh spectrum
Familiar and strange, dirty and net
Later psychiatric and wise
I, I want to be all that
At the same time Tabana, pigs and pardon!

Wisdom violent man

Not asking for something never! What feasibility Altaoh!
But please, take the time.

Another

I do not like to be the other near me
For the old and Alacasi highlands!
Otherwise, I have to be stellar?!

IN DEPTH

Researcher Anna! Beware of the word
I only heavy - and the weight over rate
There was nothing to do except I always reality
Finally revoked the order until depths.

Herakulaitih

Every happiness on earth
Dear Chums in the conflict lies!
Yes astronomical become friends
To be gunpowder smoke!
Three had met Mates:
Brothers want to
Equal before the enemy
Free before death.

Excessive in principle Wiz

Walking on the capital fingers first
Embark on four lists
The passage through the pin hole of the first pass through the doors hole!

People Alracon

That play - should be praising!
But accept higher
He even lived above the praise
It is the top!

On the door of my house

Held at the Betty
Start with one of the Aguetdit
We have mocked Above all teachers
What scoffed at the same First!

Resolution

That would be a wise lady
Responsive to the advice
Ahmed God created the world as places Bahmk

And I took the road
Including possible mad
Because of the largest Wise started here
Because the madness stop here

All eyes eternal
Forever resorted
The same God - you started and where!
God is not the same without interruption begins

Arthur Cobinhor
What he learned demolished
What could not lived cancelled
Take for example!
The teacher never underwent

That ye love that accompanied
Love paedophile warmly

Without home

Prompted fast horses
Without confusion without fear
A spacious dimensions
Rani and me
It introduced quail
Mr. without home!
Use bold and were veterans
The kwenye
Dear Star Buraq, you enjoyed!
Not dare to one
After this Fessalni
Where there are blighted
I never connected
Balamknh hours or fugitive
Eagle as a free I
Use bold, Be Old
For the month of May Atakzlni you smart, you enjoyed!
Nokia to extinction really?
I accept that the highest violent death?
That is hardly accept.
Enter the highest grave
And refrain from drinking at all?
Use bold and were veterans
The kwenye
Iahelma many colors, you enjoyed!

Precautionary!

As long as my body is beautiful, it
I allowed that I protects!
Known that God loves women,
The hostesses were first
Forgive that, I am sure
Khoury of the small loves, as some young Akhuriin
And be for the two sides

What is Brahb Church!
Not often that a young red
Despite the dark and filled with Alskrat
Balamabat and jealousy
Hated any disability,
Loveth not very old,
How wise was necessary
Even function on the machine, the father ordered!

Church mastered life
Absorbed hearts and faces
Always want to forgive me
It is therefore not forgive me?
Ehmson and slowly, and then all the way
Carrying with him new sin
And as soon as the strike old!

May God bless the Earth
Who loves beautiful
And forgive the same willingly
This type of heart pain.
As long as my body beautiful
I allowed it to be Tekaya:
Chechen be old
Satan will accept me Research!

The believer!

Hate as hate amenable to lead
The Atia!? No! And never will judge!
Not for the same terrifying, one does not inspire terror
Only horror suggests he can lead others.
I hated the leadership of self time
I also loved the animal forest and the sea
Until waste
Once,
In Sohar nice sit squat
I ask self recent term,
Aggrey alone and self -

Pious talk

God created us love it!
((God created man!)) As your answer brilliant.
It does not create loves what?
It will require created by the undeniable?
Winding it to the wisdom, it holds attach devil.


Upward

-- How can I rise this mountain best?
-- No wonder continued to emanate!

Scorner

I already let many things slip and fall Mona
For this you Tsfinu Palmzdri
But drink from cups
Very full, it will fall a lot and go
But such can be said about that flouted wine

Magician against their will

Delivered, so to spend time, the words
In the air - were sufficient to inflict woman

Souls Province

You hate souls Province
Where good and slag as well.

Happy

Ignored tired of the search
I learned that I
Since the wind Glaptni
Become a club with all the wind

To a friend pieces

If you want to for your eyes and your bones
Stay in the shade to prosecute the sun

Vade mecum, vade tecum - Lieutenant friend, a friend Lieutenant

Orchids methods and languages
Ataatbni, with me anymore?
Not only yourself and faithfully follow you
Then Sttbni - Slowly!

Badminton Takrbc

Badminton Takrbc: is unbearable
Amovernm permission Bakherbch?
Therefore, whenever captured boldly Dwati
Write Waves of ink
How Mitra flowing so generously!?
How successful in everything, no matter how I wrote
Without doubt, write complaining of the lack of clarity
Humenny what? Then think of reading what I write?!!!

Zhou poet

Give me only Samga
Sajid wood myself!
Giving meaning to the four Qguav to Amacolh
Not a little astonishing!

Who chooses to taste

That left me to chose
A small pleasure
Central pick paradise
Or perhaps Bbabh best!

Well that about takes care of my strangeness requirement for the day.

Ten Simple Rules for Forum Moderation

This will probably be of interest to fellow new marketers and old HeroClix friends. My buddy Brandon, who started at WizKids recently, found my "Jason's Ten Rules for Forum Moderators" that I'd created in my tenure there. Basically, I wanted a document I could point to that had rules in case moderation got out of hand, and I wanted a way to articulate my philosophy behind how a transparent online community should be run. It's dated November 30, 2005.

• Moderating is a time-consuming responsibility. It will require you to read the appropriate forums at least once a day, if not more often. We will also require that you read the forums on weekend, holidays, and other times when you might not want to. You can take vacations, of course, but making a commitment as a moderator means you need to take your time responsibilities seriously.
  
• You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. Oftentimes, belligerent posters will become less belligerent when you don't rise to their bait and instead take a calm, reasoned approach to discussion.
  
• Error on the side of forgiveness. When moderating, it is best to politely warn someone that their behavior is out of line before handing out a warning point. Often a private message (or, a public reply if the user has turned off private messages) will take care of 90% of most problems. Use warning points only when someone has been warned verbally first.
  
• Zero-tolerance issues. The previous rule can be ignored in instances where a user is blatantly violating a forum rule. For example, excessive profanity, personally attacking other users, discussing religion or politics - these should be dealt with quickly.
  
• Remove a thread or post only when absolutely necessary, and never delete them, ever. Most of the time, warned posts can linger as warnings to other users. Only if they are zero-tolerance issues should they be archived.
  
• Complaining can be good, within limits. Remember that part of the entertainment value that WizKids offers is lively debate - and that can include complaining, too! After all, forum complainers have helped WizKids identify potential problems. However, if someone has shown that he or she is more interested in complaining than offering constructive input, feel free to remind him that each post should contribute something to the discussion.
  
• What's good for the goose is good for the gander. As tempting as it may be to let something slide when a poster is defending WizKids, if the poster is breaking the rules, warning should be issued regardless of the tone of the post.
  
• Personal feelings have no place in moderation. You may not like a user; you may find a user is the most annoying person on the planet; you may wish the user bodily harm. That's fine. However, those feelings should not interfere with your moderation responsibilities. If you find yourself reaching for the warning button on a particular user you dislike, stop and ask yourself if you would do the same thing to a user for whom you have no particular feelings.
  
• Our main goal is to encourage discussion that is the extra entertainment value of belonging to the WizKids community. Take care not to intentionally stifle different points of view; they can be responded to logically, of course, but should be moderated only when necesary.
  
• The flexible tree bends in the storm, while the rigid tree breaks. Remember that these rules are written on paper, not set in stone [note: Thank you, 3rd Ed D&D]. Part of your responsibility is knowing how to separate the spirit of a rule from the letter of the rule.
  

I haven't been back to the WizKids forums to see if the moderators there are still following these rules, but I would certainly implement a new version of them at the next community I help create.